May, 2011

Dear friends, 

As the words from the Gospel reading for the Fifth Sunday of the Easter Season are proclaimed – “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life" (John 14:6) – I think of the hundreds of times in the course of the last thirty-four years that I have done this reading, standing at a burial site. To those who have lost a loved one, the Church announces the meaning of Easter: eternal life in the Risen Lord. Jesus speaks about His Father’s house, in which there are many dwellings and that He will prepare a place for each one of us. His words teach us that He is not just a teacher of a way but is instead the actual source of life and truth.

With this reading the Church prepares us for the celebrations of the Ascension and Pentecost. Jesus announces that He will return to take us to the “dwelling places.” He promises the gift of the Spirit. Those who do not believe are invited to believe the works that He does. Then follows the astonishing promise that in the Spirit, His followers will do works even greater than His.

On March 17, 2011, the Lord began to call Fr. Jerry Pashby, a missionary for nearly fifty years in Bolivia and Peru, to another road. There will always be the lingering memory of the three bags lined up in the hallway outside his room at Clark Street. Instead of returning to Peru that morning after a short family visit here in Boston, another odyssey began. After some twenty-four hours at Massachusetts General Hospital, Fr. Jerry left on March 18, 2011, for the dwelling place that the Lord had prepared for him.

Fr. Jerry’s ministry reveals to us the truth of Jesus’ words that His followers will do great works. Fr. Jerry, a priest of the Archdiocese of Boston, would joke that his mission parish in Santo Tomás, Cuzco, Peru, covered the same amount of square miles as the Archdiocese, at elevations over 14,000 feet. To reach Santo Tomás from the nearest airport, there is an eight-hour drive on a dirt road that reaches 16,000 feet. Most people speak Quechua. Fr. Jerry was fluent in this indigenous language, along with Spanish. At one point in his ministry he had been the Director of the Society’s Spanish language school in Lima for new missionaries. The word poverty does not do justice to the conditions in which the people of that high country region live, misery describing their reality far better. That was Fr. Jerry’s world.

That mission is responsible for the spiritual needs of nearly a hundred villages spread throughout the mountains. Each village has its team of catechists, responsible for the every day life of the church in their community, who would meet regularly with Fr. Jerry for their training for religious formation and sacramental preparation work. With his periodic visits throughout the year the sacraments of the Church would be celebrated. The town of Santo Tomás itself is the central gathering place for marketing, transportation to the outside and major religious and civic events.

Due to the conditions of grinding poverty, Fr. Jerry devoted himself as well to the social service ministry of the Church, building hospitals, schools, a parish radio station, a center for intellectually challenged children and even the construction of a new road, which would cut eight hours off the trip to Lima in order to facilitate travel and commerce.

The Easter Season is a celebration of new life in the Risen Lord. In these final weeks of the season, let us give thanks to God not only for the new life granted to Fr. Jerry but also for his years of priestly ministry in the missions as well. And thanks to you for your generosity, which enables us to do the good works of the Lord.

Sincerely,

Rev. Kevin Hays
Director

Please Save The Date!

The Annual Chicago/Joliet Banquet will be held on Monday, September 19, at Drury Lane, Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois.

The Annual Boston Banquet will be held on Sunday, October 23rd at Boston College High School.

More information to follow.

Fr. Jerry Pashby

The hospital in Santo Tomás, built under Fr. Jerry's direction.

Fr. Jerry visits the cooks who prepare a community meal.

Fr. Jerry blesses a satellite dish, which he made from scrap radios and metal. This dish brought the Gospel to thousands of people of Santo Tomás, unable to get to church.

One of Fr. Jerry's projects included the building of a road which reduced the trip to Lima by eight hours.

This is a typical scene of the mountainous region where Fr. Jerry worked.

"We're almost there...it's just over that mountain and beyond the valley."

Fr. Pashby on his motorcycle.

Fr. Jerry celebrates Mass at a remote, centuries-old chapel.

Children in Santo Tomás attend class at this school which was built under Fr. Jerry's direction.

"I don't think we're in Boston anymore."

Fr. Eugene Kirke, who arrived in Peru with Fr. Jerry in 1963, celebrated Fr. Jerry's memorial mass at the Center House in Lima, Peru.

Missionary Fr. Geoffrey Adolfo celebrated the memorial mass in the church in Santo Tomás, which was bult in 1789.

The people of Santo Tomás honor Fr. Jerry's memory.